


A Bridge Between

by Runespoor



Category: Sen to Chihiro no Kamikakushi | Spirited Away
Genre: Background Haku | Nigihayami Kohakunushi/Ogino Chihiro, Gen, Parent-Child Relationship, Post-Canon, Spirits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,228
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28134528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Runespoor/pseuds/Runespoor
Summary: Years later, Chihiro moves into a new apartment; her parents help.
Relationships: Ogino Akio & Ogino Chihiro, Ogino Chihiro & Ogino Yuuko
Comments: 20
Kudos: 86
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	A Bridge Between

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ladybug_21](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladybug_21/gifts).



> Thank you to lovepeaceohana for the beta; any errors left are my own.

It returned in drops, in dreams. Ripples over her memory. A bird’s song, calling; glowing lights over late summer ponds only she could see. 

“Chihiro, when did you say is the delivery?” Her father’s voice rings throughout the small apartment, bouncing off the naked wall and the unopened boxes.

Chihiro looks away from the sink, green-gray with mold -spreading maze-like over the wide ceramic,and calls back, “Between two and four!” 

Something flutters across the bottom of the sink, like a reflection of light. Chihiro deliberately does not look at it. Out of the corner of her eye, a small, shifting shape bumbles out of the sink and zips to the shadows.

There’s some grumbling from the corridor—good-natured, she thinks—and her mother’s soothing murmur. It’s not two yet. Then some more noise, and her father’s head pops from the kitchen’s door frame as Chihiro fills the bucket with water from the sink.

“Chihiro, I’m going to go buy us something to eat, is there anything you want?”

“Egg sandwich or doroyaki,” she says. She considers a moment, then adds, “Can you pick up another bottle of white vinegar?” Her one bottle is probably not going to be enough to clean both the bathtub and the sink.

“White vinegar and sandwiches, got it,” he nods. “Be back in twenty!”

The hardwood floor creaks under his steps as he walks down the corridor to the entrance door, then the door opens —a draught gasps in, making the kitchen’s open window creak— and shuts. The branch outside the kitchen’s window rustles again. 

The tree grows just far away enough from her second-floor window to let the sun shine in, the rich green of June leaves a mottled curtain between the apartment and the street below, [quieting the occasional car passing by. The street is [quiet as far as human noises go, the landlady had told Chihiro—“There’s the night train, but if you take off that charm of yours, it shouldn’t bother you. Oh, and most of the neighbours can’t hear it, so it’d be best if you didn’t mention it, dearie.”

”Would it be a problem if I brought someone back from the train station?” Chihiro asked, and her cheeks didn’t grow hot until the landlady smiled. She meant the spirits who sometimes came to her because they’d lost something, or because they needed something fixed or someone found in the human world, or perhaps No Face, on a visit from Zeniba. Other personal visits were more likely to involve storms or floods. Perhaps that, too, would change.

”After the stories Rinka told me about you, I’d wager you’d find a way to smooth over the wrinkles! No trouble, no trouble, I trust you. The family on the third floor has a young son, young enough that he can still see things, but”—the landlady smiled, and for a moment she looked like she hadn’t taken off her snow mantle at all—“he is a child, prone to stories, and fast asleep when the train runs.”

She hasn’t met the neighbours yet, the human ones, and neither the spirits she assumes have made their homes in the grove covering half the hill her street winds up to. If some of them skirt the in-between, she doesn’t know yet. Like the landlady. Maybe like her.

Chihiro grabs her bucket and splashes the mop in. The red tiles drink up the water, until she’s soaked them, the dust floating up, grey shining to slate when it catches the light.

“Oh, Chihiro, are you washing the floor already?” her mother asks. “Won’t it need washing again, after we’ve put the fridge and stove in? They’ll probably drag across the floor.”

Her mother teeters on the fringe of the kitchen as though unsure whether to offer her help. Chihiro shakes her head, and smiles a little. 

“I don’t mind,” Chihiro says. “I’d rather the floor be clean even where I’ll put the fridge, and I like doing household chores with water.”

She always has, since her summer in the bath-house. There’s something pleasant about the smooth feel of water on her skin, the plick-plock of water dripping and echoing, the soapy streams and mirror-like shine left behind. As a student in middle and high school, and then later in the communal house where she lived as a university student, she was always the one people would swap chores with; they knew Chihiro would rather wash than dust, do the dishes and clean the windows instead of taking care of the groceries. _Are you sure you don’t mind?_ Sayori - her high school friend turned housemate - once asked her. _I’m always afraid it’ll ruin my nails._

Once, as a teen, she’d gone on a picnic with her friends, and they’d jumped and played in the river. She’d taken off her hair tie—her favorite, purple and glittery—and slipped it around her wrist like a bracelet, so her wet hair wouldn’t knot around it. 

When it was time to return and she wanted to put it back, she found her wrist bare, the hair tie missing. A chill shivered through her, and her belly tightened. 

She swallowed her hopelessness, and looked for it anyway. It was too small for her to find and too light to stay in place, and as she searched and thought of how she’d spent the afternoon, certainty that she’d lost it in the water coalesced in her heart. If so, it would be more than lost; the stream was lively, just calm enough for grown children to jump in and play, but full of currents pulling and crashing on rocks.

Yet Chihiro couldn’t give up before she was sure she’d looked everywhere. As she balanced carefully on the rocks peeking above the water, peering through the sparkling foam, something lurched in the corner of her eye, vivid. When she turned her head, the purple hair tie glittered, drenched in water and sunlight, snagged between two rocks and rippling harshly in the current.

It hadn’t traveled as far as she’d feared, but it had gone far enough that if the current yanked it free before she caught it, she might never find it again. Chihiro hurried—big steps from one rock to another, only looking away from the flickering shine of the hair tie when she [needed to make sure she wouldn’t fall—but in the back of her mind, she felt sure it would wait for her. She hurried because she wanted it back, looking forward to its gleam in her hand, not because she feared it would snap out of her reach.

Droplets of light danced on its strands and licked playfully at her fingers as she fished it out of the water. When she straightened to tie her hair again, a shift in the corner of her vision made her turn.

There, on a rock only a few bounds away, a greenish, turtle-like creature stared at her. When it noticed she’d seen it, the kappa’s hands rose, and awkwardly waved.

Stunned, she’d waved back.

The kappa’s mouth stretched into a grotesque grin, its eyes wrinkling, and its webbed hand slowly lifted all the way to the top of his head. For a moment Chihiro thought the yokai was apologizing for not bowing by gesturing to the water precariously contained on the concave surface of its skull, the source of its power. Then the hand tapped the back of his head, and he pointed at her with his other hand. She realized he was referring to her—to her hair tie.

“I—thank you,” Chihiro said. “Is there—anything I can do as thanks?”

Its teeth were large and sharp as it grinned. Chihiro couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen the kappa before—couldn’t believe she was seeing it at all.

“Fish on Monday,” he croaked, and he slipped into the water before she could agree. 

_Take better care of your gifts,_ another voice echoed in her head, and it was an old, rustling sound, a crackling fire or a roaring spring.

“I will!” she promised. There was no one around that she could see, but she didn’t feel she was alone.

When she came back to the riverbank, Sayori, who’d stayed behind to wait for he,r rejoiced about Chihiro finding her lost hair tie, but never mentioned the kappa, or Chihiro stopping at all.

Chihiro paints her nails, sometimes, greens and blues and the palest of pinks. The polish shimmers like scales underwater, and the chips at the end of the day feel real, and earned.

Her mother is still watching her, and Chihiro rubs a hand over her forehead to push away errant locks. Sweat has started to dampen her brow, pooling under her arms, and under her mother’s gaze she suddenly feels as awkward as she did as a child. 

“I’ll keep dusting in the living room, then,” her mother says. “Oh, do you have enough bleach to clean the bathroom as well? The previous tenant really left the place in a state! So disrespectful. If I were the owner I’d be ashamed to let the place like this.”

“I did get a discount on the rent for this month because of that,” Chihiro says, bent over the mop as she pushes it back and forth. Water trickles between her toes, and she refrains from wiggling them, cool in the late spring warmth.

“You’re such a resourceful girl, Chihiro,” her mother says, halfway between a sigh and a laugh. The sound of it blends with the whisper of the breeze outside. “It’s a really nice place.”

“And it will look nicer once it’s clean,” Chihiro says with satisfaction, scraping the mop against a bit of _something_ stuck on the kitchen floor and grimacing when it screeches. She hopes the small not-creatures sharing the flat with her will forgive the sound once the place is clean.

Her mother hums, agreement and distraction rolled in one, and there’s a lull as she doesn’t move from the doorframe. Chihiro swaps her mop for a hard brush, and scrubs the walls, washing off months of dust and other things. 

She didn’t ask what manner of a spirit the previous tenant was, bowing in thanks when her landlady assured her the apartment would be entirely safe for a human, but she thinks only some of the residue is entirely mundane. It isn’t a surprise; every place that’s lived in gets coated in memories or regrets, in time. Chihiro has already decided she won’t replace the squeaky shutter in the living room or throw away the cracked teacups that were left behind; what might look like trash to some, Chihiro prefers to think of as a gift. She has no interest in erasing the place’s character, for all that she thinks of this as a start.

“Do you want some help on the sink?” Her mother’s voice doesn’t sound tentative; neither of Chihiro’s parents do ‘tentative’. But she does sound a little too casual. 

Neither of Chihiro’s parents are good at dissembling.

If Chihiro hadn’t grown up with an entire side of her life she couldn’t share with them, she thinks she wouldn’t be, either. She compensates her inevitable obfuscating by being as sincere as she can, and by never lying. 

“Sure,” Chihiro replies, without hesitating. “We can keep each other company.”

She watches to see if her mother looks relieved—if there’s some tension Chihiro’s failed to pick up on—but her mother just steps in, tiptoeing so she doesn’t step into the water drying on the tiles, and grabs a sponge. They work side-by-side, not quite in silence, but without saying much of import, until Chihiro’s father returns, arms full of food and the cleaning vinegar Chihiro asked for.

The delivery for the fridge arrives on the cusp of the sweets her father brought, and Chihiro’s mother asks the delivery men if they’d be so kind to help her husband move the stove that’s in his car, and Chihiro’s father hands out food money once they’re done, and Chihiro, who half-heartedly tried to get her parents to leave it alone but doesn’t want to make a scene, offers them tea - she finds just enough cups, less a surprise than a heartwarming confirmation - and thanks them for the time they took to help her and her family. 

She makes tea, and pours it in the old cups the previous tenant left behind; she doesn’t want to go rummaging through the unopened boxes. No one comments on the teacups being cracked. Chihiro isn’t sure if everyone is too polite to say anything, or if that’s how they look to human eyes unused to seeing past senses.

Afterwards, when they’ve cleaned the living room and the kitchen and the bathroom and the corridor, when the bigger pieces of furniture are set and Chihiro has decreed herself satisfied with the state of her bedroom, she pulls her parents out of the apartment. Most of her things are still in boxes, but the air is filled with the light of late spring, and her parents have mentioned wanting to see the area. 

It’s a little like when she left home for the first time for university, and for a moment Chihiro wonders if they realize she’s years older now, used to living afar and to making another home in places they’re not.

Her father points out the Family Mart he went to earlier, her mother likes that the post office is within walking distance. They don’t notice the small shrine ensconced between two trees until Chihiro goes over and bows, and then her father starts teasing her about the shrine being the main reason she chose this flat. Chihiro doesn’t deny it, and instead diverts their attention to the view at the end of the street, the glittering water of the river framed between the pines. 

“Oh, such a nice view,” her mother breathes.

Her father looks at Chihiro with a sly look. “I bet there’s a small path somewhere around your apartment that’s even prettier than this one,” he says. “You should look for it, and send us pictures.”

There is. Chihiro walked past the entrance when she got the keys from her landlady, and the hole between trees seemed to shimmer in the morning shadows. If she hadn’t been wearing the charm in her hair, she’d have sensed it—out of habit; one becomes sensitive to what one pays attention to—but her eyes might have slipped over it.

She wonders if her parents would sense something, if she walked them past it. They have no memories of their time in the spirit realm as such, but they’re daring in their way, and well-travelled. They met on a trip overseas as students—she knows the story of how they took a picture of the same sequoia, and her mother’s camera broke, and her father promised he’d give her a copy of the picture he took. 

When she was a child they used to talk of their travels as a thing of the past, content with spending rare vacations at home or with grandparents, and their tales seemed to her as unreal and faraway as dreams. They didn't seem to miss them, but they’ve taken to travelling again since Chihiro went to university, as though the yearning has grown again.

Her parents have their travels, her mother has her model trains, an entirely new interest that was born after they moved to the house by the abandoned festival and its spirit train; neither of them can stomach pork anymore. 

Chihiro alone has kept in touch with the spirit world, but her parents were touched by it, as well. They only looked for mundane answers, not knowing the truth about what changed them, but she has the feeling they’ve found what they were searching for.

_We could make a family holiday of it, this summer. One week in Thailand, you could come with us._

She says no every time, sometimes pretexting work or camping trips with friends. Neither reason a lie but neither fitting the images her parents would conjure.

As they walk taking in the sights, Chihiro lets her parents fuss some more—won’t she miss living with other people; has she already met everyone she’ll work with at her nonprofit. 

It’s both like and unlike moving out for the first time: like, in that their uncharacteristic fretting frays into fragile, wordless pride that she catches out of the corner of her eye. Unlike, in that they listen to the answers her adult self is able to give far more than they ever did to those she fumbled through as a teenager.

“Well, I bet you won’t be lonely long, you’re good at making friends,” her father says, and Chihiro startles. “Oh, don’t look like that; you know you are. People like you, Chihiro.”

"We're always happy to meet your friends," her mother says, and her father guffaws. 

"Now who's the one treating her like a child!" He catches Chihiro’s eye, and winks.

"Hmm," her mother says, "I'm only telling Chihiro, if she wants to introduce any important friend to us, we'd be happy to meet that person." 

Chihiro doesn't look, but she knows her mother is looking at her. There's no real answer she could make without it containing at least the seed of a lie. "Thank you, Mom," she says, and means it.

Her father sighs. "Ah, your mother is right. Please don’t forget about us entirely,” he says wryly. “Sayori doesn’t live with you anymore for us to bother when you forget to call two weeks in a row.”

The first time it happened, exams and homeworks had pushed it from her mind. The second—and last—she’d been helping No-Face track down the lost kanji of Rin’s name; her parents were safe, human, away.

“I promise I’ll do my best,” Chihiro says.

She’s better at this, now, the balancing. 

When the spirits start coming to her for help—sent on her way by her landlady or by her friends on the other side, or by the myriad of ways people who need it can find their way to someone willing to lend a hand—she’ll be ready.

“I know,” her mother says.

The river glitters like a dragon’s scales. It will look breathtaking on Tanabata, fireworks reflected green and sparkling; today, with her parents, its murmur is a familiar and nostalgic song from childhood.

Chihiro passes her hand through her hair, touches the tie that despite the years never seems to lose its color or its strength, and just breathes.

When her parents leave after dinner, citing a mere two-hours drive when she offers to sleep on the sofa, Chihiro pours two cups of tea. The tea is cooling; she would never serve it so to a guest, but this is home. 

She drinks the first, and sets the second next to the sink in the darkened kitchen. 

"Let's take care of each other," she says. "Thank you for sharing this place with me."

Through the leaves, a cloud passes over the moon, like a dragon's wink. In the distance, she might hear the echo of a train, or a laugh; over a month still to Tanabata.

In the liminal space between the darkness and the shallower shade moonlight caresses, something moves. 

Chihiro smiles, and leaves the teacup out.


End file.
